Secret Ceremony

If you missed the gala signing of the much-ballyhooed free trade bill Friday in the Rose Garden, it's because it didn't happen. Now, before you get all excited: the President didn't have an attack of conscience and veto it. He did his duty to his corporate masters and signed it with all due somber diligence, to their enthusiastic applause. However, there was a change of venue, which is what accused people ask for when they know das volk are kind of fed up, and Occupying Wall Street. His advisers probably told him: If you're going to flush away as many as a quarter million American jobs down the offshoring toilet, better to do it in the safety and comfort of the Oval Office.




Barry Take a Bow: CEOs Applaud Their Puppet in Semi-Darkness



Witnessing the deed was one lone Yellow Dog Dem, the nominal Labor Secretary, an AP photographer, and a handful of the richest and most powerful CEOs in the nation  -- who just happen to be among his closest advisers. 


There was no big official White House photo on the email propaganda sheet known as "West Wing Week", which usually glorifies bill signings, no matter how insignificant.  No MSNBC and CNN cameras. No Nancy Pelosi. No John Boehner. No phonily smiling American workers whose jobs are being sacrificed as photo-op props. No Bipartisan hugging and kissing. No gaffeably lovable Joe Biden open-micing: "This is so effing awesome!"


But it was so Bipartisan!  Congress broke the gridlock and passed something for a change! Well, that's the trouble.  It was a Republican bill, originally crafted under George W. Bush.  And the 250,000 jobs it is forecast to create by Business Roundtable and Chamber of Commerce boosters will not be American jobs. That's why it was delayed. The Democrats insisted on adding a little token assistance to middle-aged American textile workers who are expected to lose their jobs to 40-cent/hour North Korean wage slaves allowed to work in the DMZ.  Even so, 75% of all the Congressional Democrats balked at Barack and voted against the package. There's that little matter of trade unionists being murdered in Colombia by hired corporate thugs.  But the White House made sure to announce that Barack called Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos  after the signing and made him promise to call off the goons. He'll be on the honor system, apparently.

The FTA passage simply doesn't fit in with the president's new campaign rallying cry: "We Can't Wait!" which puts the entire blame for the unemployment crisis on the obstructionist Republicans. The FTA has been strangely absent from Obama's list of talking points in such blighted areas as North Carolina and Nevada. After all, while he railed against NAFTA during his first campaign, he has just succeeded in at least doubling the damage which "free trade" has already done with a few more strokes of some cheap souvenir pens.


About the only people cheering and grabbing for their grubby pens were the millionaire CEOs of the Business Roundtable (BRT) super-lobby, who stand to profit handsomely from the latest round of foreign profiteering and outsourcing. After some initial kvetching about not getting their mugs on TV Friday, they posted on their website the obligatory thank-you note to their White House and Congressional minions:

“Business Roundtable commends the President and Congress for bowing to our relentless pressure and campaign contributions working together to approve these pro-growth (for us), job- killing creating trade agreements and bipartisan TAA legislation,” said Jim McNerney, Chairman of Business Roundtable and Chairman, President and CEO of Cheating Defense Contractor The Boeing Company.  “It’s now time to build on this milestone and focus on the future.  With 95 percent of the world’s consumers living outside the United States,(and the number of consumers with money or jobs rapidly dwindling here at home) our manufacturers, service providers and farmers stand to benefit from a fair and accountable international trading system.  Pursuing additional international trade and investment initiatives will open new markets for businesses of all sizes, and fuel U.S. economic growth and job creation.  If we do not seize the opportunity to lead, others will, and the accompanying economic benefits will accrue to their nations rather than ours.”  (We want more after this. We will not rest until we own the entire universe).  

The fact that the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) found that Boeing broke the law this year in building its Dreamliner plant in anti-union, "right to work" South Carolina, did not bar McNerney from being invited to the ceremony as guest of honor by the President. Far from it: not only is McNerney chairman of Barry's Export Council, he also sits on the hilariously named Council on Jobs & Competiveness. (CoJoCo -- or how about CutJob/CuJo? These greedheads are one slavering pack of rabid attack dogs!) 




Big Bipartisan Bill-Signing Witnessed by Ten Whole People (All Richer than You)

Also on hand for the exclusive signing ceremony was Xerox CEO Ursula Burns, Export Council vice-chair and (you guessed it) another member of CuJo.  Burns cut 4,500 American jobs during the first six months of this year alone. But Xerox net income is up 28% from a year ago. Her annual salary is listed at $4.08 million by Forbes.


McNerney and Burns and their CuJo cohort are also big proponents of repatriating corporate profits in exchange for an empty promise of job creation (the mythical "creationism") and dismantling the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (which prevents publicly traded companies from defrauding investors). Obama is dutifully mulling over both those proposals as he pitches his latest gimmick of refinancing the mortgages of a few select homeowners who are actually still paying their mortgages on time. The banks, like Colombia, will be on the honor system to do the right thing by their customers.


Back to that ever-increasing executive compensation combined with ever-decreasing tax payments to Uncle Sam. According to the Institute for Policy Studies, the World Trade Organization has actually taken the drastic step of reprimanding Obama about the U.S. government's over-the-top coddling of the CuJo's.

Corporate tax dodging has gone so out of control that 25 major U.S. corporations last year paid their chief executives more than they paid Uncle Sam in federal income taxes. Corporate outlays for CEO compensation - despite the lingering Great Recession - are rising. Employment levels have barely rebounded from their recessionary lows. Top executive pay levels, by contrast, have rebounded nearly all the way back from their pre-recession levels.

For example: McNerney, with an annual salary topping $13 million, earns more than his entire company pays in U.S. taxes every year.

So with friends like multinational CEOs voraciously whispering in the president's ear, who needs Republican enemies?  "We Can't Wait" has suddenly replaced "Win the Future" as the new Obama slogan. Lots of W's, which is apt, seeing that this is Dubya's third term.  Personally, the only "W" I like is the one in OWS. At long last, there are tens of thousands of people protesting and saying "WTF!!!!" about being eaten alive by the Corporate States of America. 

When Corporate Greed Attacks!